Impressed by first MaxMyPoint hotel award alerts

A few weeks ago I read a post comparing various hotel award alert tools that concluded MaxMyPoint was the only one that did the job (since the internet is no longer searchable I can no longer find that post; if you wrote it, let me know and I’ll link to it!).

Years ago I used and recommended Seth Miller’s Hotel Hustle to find award availability optimized by point value, but the functionality of that tool died before too long and we were back to searching for award space manually.

Fortunately for me, I actually had a very specific need for an award alert, and to my shock, MaxMyPoint met it perfectly and saved me a few hundred dollars by swapping my paid reservations for award nights.

Two missing nights in Prague

The last time I visited Prague, World of Hyatt had finally secured a property in the city: the Lindner Hotel Prague Castle. To my genuine surprise and delight, it was a Category 1 property, costing between 3,500 and 6,500 points per night.

Compare this to the other obvious properties in Prague. The Hilton Prague and Hilton Prague Old Town, both great hotels I’ve stayed at many times, have standard pricing between 40,000 and 50,000 Hilton Honors points, or roughly $200-250 in value. The three centrally-located Marriott properties all cost 33,000 points and up. IHG starts in the same range: they’re non-starters.

So Hyatt giving away nights for $65 was pretty exciting. The property is located in the heart of Hřadčany flush up against Prague Castle, so while it is in a tourist area, it’s not actually an area where most tourists stay, which makes it remarkably quiet in the evening once they decamp to their hotels in the city center.

I had a simple problem: my first, third, and fifth nights were available on points, my second night was available with cash and points (for a premium room), and my fourth night was only available with cash. So that’s how I booked it: five reservations for five nights.

Then I set a MaxMyPoint alert for the entire 5-night stay, on May 17.

On May 27 at 3:22 am, I got my first alert (subject line “Your Hotel Alert Update”) saying the nights were available. Perhaps because the alert came while I was asleep, by the time I checked availability it was no longer there, if it had ever been.

On June 4, at the perfectly sensible hour of 12:08 pm, I got my second alert. This time, awake as I was, I immediately popped over to the Hyatt app and saw the alert was correct: all five nights were available. I canceled my existing 5 reservations (technically risky, but I didn’t want to transfer over another 26,500 Ultimate Rewards points if I didn’t have to) and was able to successfully complete the reservation.

Then, as if icing on the cake, MaxMyPoint sent another alert at 8:32 pm that the award space was no longer available, a charming free reminder that they had done their job for me.

Conclusion

As indicated by the history of Hotel Hustle, it’s not a great idea to let your own skill and intuition atrophy every time new tools come along to replace them, because that puts you at the mercy of the toolmaker. But it’s equally foolish to ignore when tools are introduced that you can integrate into your workflow to make your life easier, and MaxMyPoint gave me the information I needed just in time to take advantage of it. Kudos to them, and I’ll be a repeat (non-paying) customer as long as they keep it up.